Nintendo, P&G, Interflora: Intellectual Property

May 22 (Bloomberg) -- Nintendo Co. fended off a second U.S.
patent-infringement case this month against its Wii video-game
system, adding to a trend of companies fighting royalty demands
and winning.

Nintendo didn’t infringe licensing company Copper
Innovations Group LLC’s patent for a way a computer interacts
with a device such as a joystick, the Court of Appeals for the
Federal Circuit in Washington ruled yesterday. On May 13, the
court said the Wii didn’t infringe a different licensing
company’s patent for a system to track a game user’s position.

Companies including Kyoto, Japan-based Nintendo, discount
retailer Overstock.com Inc. and electronics seller Newegg Inc.
are winning cases brought by patent owners who rather than using
their inventions to make products, are seeking royalties from
those that make devices or provide services.

“Our policy is if you come after us with spurious claims,
we’ll fight you because we’re not settling,” said Mark Griffin,
general counsel for Salt Lake City-based Overstock.com.
“Bullies need to have their noses bloodied once in a while.”

Olivia Luk, a lawyer at Niro, Haller & Niro in Chicago who
argued the May 6 appeal on behalf of Copper, declined to comment
on the case.

It’s not always the patent owner that gets bloodied.
Nintendo lost a jury verdict in March in a case brought by a
former Sony Corp. engineer over three-dimensional images in
Nintendo’s 3DS gaming system.

Officials with the electronics company didn’t have an
immediate comment on yesterday’s ruling. In a statement
following its May 13 victory against Motiva LLC, Richard Medway,
Nintendo of America’s general counsel, said, “Nintendo has a
passionate tradition of developing innovative products while
respecting the intellectual property rights of others.”

Overstock.com and Newegg, based in City of Industry,
California, won a May 15 decision from the Federal Circuit that
an Alcatel Lucent SA patent on online shopping was invalid. In a
separate case over e-commerce patents, Newegg won a January
appeals court ruling invalidating patents that had also been
asserted against Oracle Corp. and EBay Inc.

Also this month, the appeals court sided against patent-licensing firms in cases against mobile-phone companies
including Verizon Wireless and Sprint over telephone marketing,
against Barnes & Noble Inc. over its Nook e-reader and against
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG over its financial-services unit.

Teva Loses Appeals Court Bid to Revive Patent on Seasonique

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. lost an appeals court
bid to revive a patent it owns for the birth-control pill
Seasonique.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, without issuing a
formal opinion, affirmed a lower court ruling that the patent is
invalid. The ruling is a victory for Mylan Inc. and Lupin Ltd.
The patent, which is due to expire in 2024, also was the subject
of a Teva suit against Actavis Inc.

The case is Teva Women’s Health Inc. v. Lupin Ltd., U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, 12-1577.

In dispute are patents 5,989,569, issued in November 1999;
patent 6,045,811, issued in April 2000; and 7,122,199, issued in
October 2006.

Cincinnati-based P&G seeks court orders barring further
infringement of its patents and awards of money damages,
litigation costs and attorney fees. The consumer-products
company asked the court to triple the damages to punish CAO
Group, of West Jordan, Utah, for its actions.

In a May 21 statement, CAO Group’s General Counsel Terry
Jones said his company “is respectful of intellectual property
rights” and will defend its products. P&G’s claims are without
merit and CAO “developed and innovated its own proprietary
technology” for the accused products, Jones said.

The case is Procter & Gamble Co. v. CAO Group Inc., 13-cv-00335, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Ohio
(Cincinnati).

For more patent news, click here.

Trademark

M&S Loses Trademark Case Against Interflora Over Online Ads

Marks & Spencer Group Plc, the U.K.’s largest clothing
retailer, lost a court ruling in London over whether it used
Interflora Group Ltd.’s trademarked terms to trigger flower
delivery advertisements on search engines.

Judge Richard Arnold ruled yesterday that the London-based
retailer can’t use the keywords, which include Interflora and
Interflora Delivery, to drive customers to its website through
advertisements on Google Inc.’s search engine.

“A significant proportion of the consumers who searched
for ‘interflora’ and the other signs, and then clicked on M&S’s
advertisements displayed in response to those searches, were led
to believe, incorrectly, that M&S’s flower delivery service was
part of the Interflora network,” the judge said in his written
ruling.

Interflora sued M&S in 2008 for violating its trademark
rights in the U.K. In 2009, the court sent the case to the
European Union’s Court of Justice for guidance on how to
interpret the bloc’s trademark rules in Internet search cases.
The EU’s top tribunal passed the case back to the U.K. for a
final decision in 2011.

“When the decision was referred back from the EU,
trademark owners were fairly negative about their prospects,”
Paula Flutter, a trademark attorney at EIP Partnership LLP who
isn’t involved in the case, said in a telephone interview.
Yesterday’s ruling “will give them optimism that cases can go
in their favor.”

M&S is disappointed by the judgment and is considering its
options, Emma Johnson, a spokeswoman for the retailer, said in
an e-mailed statement.

“Keyword advertising is a very powerful tool and so it is
vital for consumer protection that Internet search results take
consumers directly to the brands they are looking for,” Rhys
Hughes, Interflora’s president, said in an e-mailed statement.

The U.K. flower delivery market was worth 2.2 billion
pounds ($3.34 billion) a year from 2008 to 2012, Arnold said in
his ruling.

Khloe Kardashian Told Her T-Shirts Too Similar to N.Y. Logo

Khloe Kardashian, a member of the celebrity Kardashian
family, was sent a trademark-related cease-and-desist letter by
New York state, Associated Press reported.

The letter addressed a similarity between an image used on
Khloe Kardashian’s line of t-shirts and the logo of a New York
state farm program, according to AP.

The disputed t-shirt design comprises the Statue of
Liberty, rows of crops and the text “Rich Soil New York,”
according to the wire service.

The state design also has crop rows, the Statue of Liberty,
and, in a font similar to that used on the Kardashian t-shirts,
the phrase “Pride of New York,” AP reported.

For more trademark news, click here.

Copyright

Housing Upswing Bringing More Home-Design Copyright Registration

An improvement in the new-housing market is causing a
parallel increase in copyright registration for home designs,
Florida’s Fort Myers News-Press reported.

Registration efforts that had been almost nonexistent since
the housing bubble crash five years ago began to turn around
about six months ago, according to the newspaper.

Tim Rose, president of Fort Myers-based Rutenberg Homes
Inc., told the News-Press he was surprised there were no
copyright-infringement cases for his company to pursue during
the downturn because in a recession, builders sometimes do
desperate things they wouldn’t consider during boom times.

Before the crash, there was a lot of copying that resulted
from potential homebuyers taking a brochure from one home
designer to a contractor and asking for that home to be built,
according to the newspaper.

Kenya Copyright Board Moves to Halt Cricket-Match Programming

The Kenya Copyright Board raided a local pay-television
company and impounded its equipment, alleging it had been used
for copyright infringement, the Star newspaper of Nairobi
reported.

The company was accused of using the equipment to
distribute Indian Premier League cricket matches without
authorization, according to the newspaper.

The content was distributed through the company’s cable-television platform, the Star reported.

The distribution took place in both Mombasa and Nairobi,
according to the Star.

For more copyright news, click here.

Trade Secrets/Industrial Espionage

Florida Hospital Head Says Negotiated Rated to Be Made Public

The chief executive officer of Mount Sinai Medical Center
in Miami agreed to reveal the negotiated rates of payment it
receives from insurers, the Washington Post reported.

Hospitals and insurers usually treat these negotiated rates
-- typically lower than so-called “sticker rates -- as a
closely guarded secret, according to the Post.

The hospital will post its prices relative to Blue Cross
and Aetna and challenge other area hospitals to do the same, CEO
Steve Sonereich said in an interview on a local radio station,
the Post reported.

Baptist Health South Florida was asked it if would follow
suit and refused, according to the newspaper.